Status: 11/09/2022 1:53 p.m
From the Federal President’s point of view, November 9th will forever remind us of the “break in civilization caused by the Holocaust”. The President of the Central Council of Jews, Schuster, had previously warned that memories would fade.
At a commemoration event on November 9th at Bellevue Palace, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier declared that today would forever commemorate the “break with civilization caused by the Holocaust”. “November 9 will always challenge us to fight anti-Semitism,” he said.
November 9, 1938 was not the beginning of the persecution of the Jews. “But what happened on that day of open violence was the visible foreshadowing of the precisely planned and brutally executed disenfranchisement, deportation and finally annihilation of the Jews of Germany and Europe.”
A day of several historical events
On November 9, 1918, the Reichstag in Berlin proclaimed the republic, thus sealing the end of the monarchy. On November 9, 1938, the Nazi pogroms against the Jewish population took place. All over Germany, synagogues burned, shops were looted and destroyed, Jews were mistreated, arbitrarily arrested and killed. Finally, November 9, 1989 stands for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the division of Germany.
Steinmeier: Endure ambivalence
“On that day, if we really consider all aspects of it, it becomes clear to us again and again what great opportunities and democratic awakenings on the one hand and what abysses, what terrible crimes on the other hand we were capable of here in Germany,” he said Steinmeier. At the same time, he promoted “other forms and formats with which we can make commemoration days and days of remembrance alive and meaningful for the present”.
It is possible “to commemorate the brightest and darkest hours of German history of the 20th century, no matter how difficult they are to each other, and to recall their significance for the present,” explained the head of state. “To endure this ambivalence is part of being a German.”
Warning of memory fading
The President of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, had previously warned that calendar coincidences could contribute to fading memories of the Shoah. On the anniversary of the November pogroms against the Jewish population, he warned against drawing a line under the memory of the extermination of the Jews and the horrors of the Nazi era. According to a recent survey, 49 percent of Germans would like to pull this, he recalled in a guest article for the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” on November 9th.
Schuster: It doesn’t work without a living culture of remembrance
He would strongly recommend these people to sit down with a Shoah survivor, Schuster said. “Some of them are still alive. And their traumata still reverberate in their children and grandchildren and will not have faded away in their descendants either.” Without a living culture of remembrance there would be no democratic culture in the Federal Republic of Germany, added Schuster.
It is a task for society as a whole to preserve and further develop memory: “Soon there will be no more contemporary witnesses. At the same time, the number of people who have no biographical reference to the Nazi era is growing. All of this does not make responsible remembrance any easier.”
“Paradigm shift” in Germany
Schuster wrote of a “paradigm shift” in Germany: “The memory of the Holocaust is up for discussion.” Calendar coincidences such as today’s November 9th also contribute to this. 2022 is an example of the fact that the culture of remembrance is in danger from various sides, Schuster continued. Among other things, he criticized Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux and former Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters, who repeatedly called for a boycott of Israel. In his worst nightmares, he would not have dared to imagine anti-Semitic depictions like those at this year’s documenta in Kassel.